# Alumni

 Ana MalagonO. Keith Baker Search for 140 microeV Pseudoscalar and Vector Dark Matter Using Microwave CavitiesDark matter plays an important role in structure formation and composes 26.8% of the total energy density in the universe. There are many postulated particles that are theorized to be the constituents of cold dark matter; however, none have been observed experimentally. One strongly motivated particle that could be cold dark matter is the axion, a pseudoscalar with a two photon vertex. Experimental techniques to detect dark matter axions rely on a multiphoton radiative transition; in the... more Gennady VoronovGeorge Fleming Applied ScientistAmazonThe Extent of the Two-Color Fundamental Conformal WindowThe $SU\!\left(2\right)$ gauge theories with $N_{f}$ flavors of massless vector-like Dirac fermions transforming in the pseudo-real fundamental representation have an enhanced global chiral symmetry and a distinct symmetry breaking pattern. These theories are expected to be qualitatively different from quantum chromodynamics (QCD) in the infrared (IR), especially with respect to the properties of the Nambu-Goldstone bosons (NGB). Having the potential to elucidate many features of both known and... more Liyao WangMokshay Madiman Heat capacity bound, energy fluctuations and convexityIn classical statistical mechanics, the heuristic that in the canonical ensemble the energy distribution is sharply peaked at the mean energy is crucial in justifying the equivalence between the canonical and microcanonical ensembles. It turns out that this is closely related with the fundamental notion of a typical set and the Shannon-McMillan-Breiman theorem in information theory. In this dissertation, we explore the connections between the two and establish some new rigorous results that are... more
 Colin BruzewiczDavid DeMille Continuous Optical Production of Ultracold Vibronic Ground State Polar MoleculesPolar molecules present an exciting new test bed for ultracold physics with applications in numerous fields, such as chemical reaction dynamics, many-body systems, and quantum computation. Creating large samples of these molecules that can be trapped for long times, however, remains an ongoing challenge. We demonstrate the direct formation of vibronic ground state RbCs molecules by photoassociation of ultracold atoms followed by radiative stabilization. From analysis of the relevant free-to-... more Bernard HicksHelen Caines Differential Production Cross-Section of Heavy-Flavor Electrons in √s = 2.76 TeV pp collisions at the LHC with the ALICE detectorRecent results at RHIC seem to confirm T.D.Lee’s hypothesis that a new form of matter, the quark- gluon plasma (QGP), could be formed in heavy-ion collisions at high energies. Heavy quarks, being formed in the early stages of heavy-ion collisions, form a good probe for the properties of the QGP. The energy loss of heavy quarks as they traverse the medium is predicted to be less than that of the lighter quarks. However, previous measurements of the nuclear modification factor at RHIC... more Lawrence LeeTobias Golling Postdoctoral FellowHarvard UniversityA Search for B-violating Supersymmetry in Multijet Signatures at the ATLAS ExperimentWith supersymmetry (SUSY) increasingly constrained, more attention is placed on alternate flavors of SUSY that allow for an unexcluded natural theory. A search for new physics phenomena in all-hadronic signatures in \sqrt{s}=8 TeV pp collisions using an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb^-1 collected by the ATLAS detector at the LHC will be presented. Within the context of SUSY, gluino pair-production gives rise to multijet final states in models that allow for violation of R-parity. Two types of... more Rongrong MaJohn Harris Assistant PhysicistBrookhaven National LaboratoryJet measurements in pp and Pb-Pb collisions in ALICELattice-QCD predicts the existence of a new form of hot, dense matter called the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) above a critical energy density. Such matter is believed to be created in relativistic heavy-ion collisions, where sufficient energy is expected to be deposited by colliding ions in a limited volume. To study the properties of the QGP, high transverse momentum (pT) partons produced at the early stage of the collisions are used as probes. Since partons are not directly measurable, jet... more Tianqi ShenCorey O'Hern Quantitative ResearchLaurion CapitalContact Percolation, Fragility and Frictional PackingsThis thesis presents four computational and theoretical studies of the structural, mechanical, and vibrational  properties of purely repulsive  disks, dimer-, and ellipse-shaped particles with and without friction.  The first study investigated the formation of interparticle contact networks below jamming onset at packing fraction φJ , where the pressure of the system becomes nonzero.  We generated ensembles of static packings of frictionless disks over a range of... more